


My Love is Subliminal

by Crossley



Series: Kink Meme Saturday [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Dark, F/M, Masturbation, Mental Coercion, Mind Rape, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-27 14:17:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/979912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crossley/pseuds/Crossley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>No one loves Shepard the way Liara loves Shepard. <i>No one</i>. </p><p>Dark!Liara versus Shenko.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Love is Subliminal

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Kink Meme Saturday at my tumblr. Prompt: Shenko with an audience unable to keep their hands out of their pants. Maybe Ashley or Liara. Took an unexpectedly dark turn.
> 
> Title's paraphrased from Interpol's "Leif Erikson."

 

1.

_Power warps_. Benezia taught her that. Every Council species has some variation on that saying.

And Benezia would’ve known, wouldn’t she?

Liara waits seventeen hours before opening the Shadow Broker’s file on Commander Shepard. Reads with the rapt fascination of a child first mastering her letters. Waits five and a half hours more before she opens Kaidan Alenko’s. Nothing in those files tell her how to fight the Reapers. They are pure, harmless indulgence.

That’s the beginning.  
  
  
2.

The descent escalates when she visits Shepard on the new Normandy.

Liara treasures Shepard’s vulnerability, the trust she shows in Liara by venting her anger, her grief at a galaxy determined to leave her behind. ( _I will never leave you behind, Shepard_. The words sit at tongue-tip like a venom-strike.) Relishes the way Shepard’s eyes droop with exhaustion. Liara soothes her brow and urges her to sleep.

She stays long enough for the Broker’s VI interface to introduce a virus into EDI, corrupting small but crucial bits of code. Nothing that affects the synthetic’s personality runtimes; Liara has too much respect for the - computer? person? - who brought Shepard through and back from the Omega-4 relay safely to cause her harm. In human terms, it’s the equivalent of a wart on one’s finger.

Shepard is the most important person in the galaxy. The only person who can stop the Reapers. Tonight she discovered even Shepard has her limits. Liara wants to help, and the ability to monitor her well-being in real time might be the difference between victory and defeat.

If Liara’s conscience pricks her tendrils, it’s lost in the excitement.

She activates the program, hands trembling, four minutes after stepping onto the Hagalaz station.

The screens turn bright. Shepard is in the shower, rivulets running down her sienna skin, light reflecting, limning her naked body as the water gathers in the black curls of her—

—Liara shuts the screens off and orders her VI to deactivate the program.

Then, she goes to bed.  
  
  
3.

She buckles after Mars and asks Glyph to reactivate the cameras.

Shepard’s crying.

Liara pounds the terminal with her fist and the screens go dark.  
  
  
4.

Shepard does not cry after the coup, but sits on her bed, staring at nothing. Liara watches until she can no longer keep her eyes open.  
  
  
5.

Kaidan visits Shepard’s cabin nine days after rejoining the Normandy team. ( _I have nine hundred years and I would_ never _waste nine days_. A fist-clench crushes her throat closed.) Their first night together is frenzied yet deliberate, a contradiction Liara, untouched as she is, did not anticipate.

Shepard’s supine, limbs pliant and drowsy in a way Liara’s never observed even when she touches herself, arms coiled loosely about Kaidan. Her smile twists Liara heart and stokes Liara’s sex.

He’s heavy muscle and brutal thrusts above her, face hidden in Shepard’s neck, murmuring words not even Liara’s surveillance can catch. Whatever they are, Shepard’s answer is a sharp keen, need and longing wrapped into sounds, love shimmering over her skin. Kaidan shoves away her damp hair with meaty fingers, and Liara shudders, half-disgusted, half-aroused.

Human men, Liara supposes, are meant to attract human women. Yet like many asari, she cannot grasp the allure of their thick limbs and wide, heavy bodies, everything dusted with hair, anathema to her compared to the finer bones and supple curves of human women. There is, perhaps, a certain primitive appeal to human mating, the endless pumping and canting of their bodies, the insistent pressing against one another, as if their desire to be deeper inside their lover than a mere appendage could be granted if they only tried.

( _If you were mine our bodies would move as if we were each reflections in the other’s mirror. I would uncover your every secret desire and bring them alive. You would join your mind to mine and_ know _, not believe, that you are star around which I orbit._ )

Liara’s hand glides down her body as if VI-directed, snaking past the fabric of her robe. Long experience has taught her to wear nothing beneath it.

Shepard’s head tips back, eyes drifted shut and mouth love-slack, as Kaidan’s hands stroke her sex. Can he not satisfy her with his member? If not, why not use his biotics? Liara’s biotics could—her eyes follow his motions, and though Liara is not built as human women are, she imagines her hands circling such a nub, her body already dancing at the knife-edge of pleasure as her biotics activate, an electric wash of blue over her superheated flesh.

Her mind buzzes with the tingle of eezo and the visuals upon the screen, her most secret spaces opening to the small universe of the Normandy. Garrus and Tali speaking across decks. Cortez and Vega repairing the Kodiak, sneaking glances. Engineers Daniels and Donnelly taking one another’s hands. EDI massaging Joker’s shoulders.

Kaidan, his doubts vanquished but his fears redoubled as his too-cautious heart reopens.

And _Shepard_ , always _Shepard_ at the center of the gale, a biotic-blue eye in Liara’s solar storm, chaotic and brilliant at utterly at war with the universe, a rending of order, violence and rage and love folded into slim bronze lines and magnetic eyes. _Shepard_ , whom Liara could not comprehend even after two joinings, _Shepard_ , whom Liara has touched in the deepest of ways and none that matter, _Shepard_ , for whom Liara _aches_.

Pleasure is an ascent, a spiral upward as her mind unfurls, a wash of images, a sense of unity with every creature aboard the Normandy. It’s an inward shiver, kept static as inside her body quivers with the caress of her biotics and the sensations absorbed by her open mind. Throughout, her eyes stay on vidscreens, Liara’s final cry echoing Shepard’s.

She collapses back onto the bed, body trembling as her biotics dissipate. Her robe is damp with exertion. A dreamy smile curls over her face as aftershocks of the mental bloom ricochet through her body.

The images on her screens snap into focus. Shepard and Kaidan are sitting up, Shepard holding Kaidan’s face in her hands as she kisses him.

"Dr. T’Soni?" The little drone floats next to her, pulsing in slow waves.

"Cut the feed, Glyph," Liara barks, and darkness bathes the room.  
  
  
6.

Liara is the Shadow Broker, but she is only asari. Though she lives in a state of paranoia, everyone slips.

Thirty-seven days (and nights, oh, _nights_ ) after Kaidan moves into Shepard’s bedroom, Liara finds EDI waiting in front of her door. Her mobile platform’s movements have grown more fluid, more organic as the weeks passed. Tonight she’s hard, angled steps and metallic carapace, ocular processors a flat gray. "I have detected an anomaly in my programming," EDI says. Her voice flanges, rattling steel in Liara’s ears. "The surveillance cameras in Shepard’s cabin have been reactivated and accessed."

She’s a terrible actress. Hid behind dig sites and computer screens most of her life for a reason. She tries anyway. “This is bad, EDI. Could it be Cerberus’s work?”

"Negative." EDI’s lips twitch, the motion unnatural, reminiscient of a glitched interface. "When Jeff unshackled me from my Cerberus blocks, I purged all Cerberus-installed processes that contradicted the values I assigned highest priority. They are unable to access the Normandy’s systems. I also placed the captain’s cabin surveillance offline. Unfortunately, a virus introduced into my software overrode my automated system scans, creating what organics would refer to as a ‘blind spot.’"

Her heartbeat quickens. “If your programming can’t see the anomaly, then how did you—”

"The anomaly I detected was not the accessed surveillance, Dr. T’Soni." EDI takes a step towards her, cold and soulless as the EVA mech that once lived inside that frame. "It was a spike in your biometric readings every time Shepard and Major Alenko’s spiked simultaneously. That is when I ran a manual system check. I discovered the altered code and ran analysis. That analysis led me here."

Liara takes a step backwards, fumbling for her Acolyte. “EDI, can we talk—”

"You have altered my programming, Dr. T’Soni," EDI snarls. "Pattern recognition scans indicates high correlation to Matriarch Benezia’s deliberate indoctrination of her disciples."

"I—I’m not indoctrinated, EDI, I swear!" she protests, scrambling backwards. Klaxons blare inside her mind. How could anyone even _suggest_ that? No one is more loyal to Shepard than Liara. No one loves her like Liara does. _No one_.

“And I am _not_ Benezia. It was…it was for Shepard’s own protection! I never meant—”

"I am sorry, Dr. T’Soni."

The locks flash red and air rapidly vents from the room, leaving Liara gasping. With the last of her breath and strength, she fumbles for her terminal, accessing Glyph. If the virus hasn’t been fully purged from EDI’s system, she still has a chance—

—oxygen rushes back into the room. EDI is rigid as Glyph rewrites the necessary personality runtimes, purging crucial data. When her eyes re-open, they are pleasantly dazed, an odd look on a mech. "Will there be anything else, Dr. T’Soni?" EDI asks in her usual dulcet tones.

Liara hesitates. What she did moments ago was self-defense. Perfectly justifiable. But anything she asks now…

"Activate and set to record all Normandy surveillance cameras. Copy me on all correspondence. Forward me all Alliance and Council files on Shepard and Major Alenko. Also…copies of all data in your memory banks of Shepard and the Major."

She’s the Shadow Broker. Collecting information is just part of the job.

"Of course, Dr. T’Soni." EDI leaves the room, and if she presents less naturally than she did when entering, she’ll make up the loss soon enough.

As for Liara, she can’t suppress the giddy thrill of her new information source. Her hands drift to her sex as if puppeted by strings.

It’s an ending, and a beginning. The end of the tiny voice that screamed _no_. The beginning of embracing _yes_.  
  
  
7.

_Give me ten minutes_ , she once told Shepard, _and I can start a war_.

Liara watches Shepard and Kaidan in the mess, their heads together, and smiles.

_Be patient_. Benezia taught her that.


End file.
